This week’s podcast, sponsored by Bio Till Cover Crops, features Miguel Garcia, Sustainable Agriculture Program Manager with the Napa County Resource Conservation District in California.

It seems like almost every month companies of various sizes across many industries are announcing new sustainability commitments, along with sustainability programs and markets that farmers and ranchers can participate in. Advancements in technology and increased capital have provided farmers more opportunities to generate additional revenue from participation in those markets. Read more in this article from Southern Minnesota.

Organic matter gives soil structure, allowing it to better drain and hold nutrients. Carbon left in the soil becomes a permanent part of the soil, which is released from the soil upon cultivation. Find out how to build soil organic matter and how to sequester more carbon in the soil in this video from Utah State University.

AGCO is conducting agronomic research trials and field demonstrations in 2021 to help farmers successfully add soil carbon sequestration to their farming operations.

American Farmland Trust shares publicly its CaRPE Tool, a web-based interactive tool that allows users to quickly visualize and quantify net greenhouse gas, or GHG, emission reductions resulting from the implementation of cropland and grazing land management practices. The user can quantify the current use and impact of key regenerative practices and then estimate the potential to sequester more carbon if these practices are applied more broadly, given the specific farmland resources in a state or region.

A new way of analyzing the chemical composition of soil organic matter will help scientists predict how soils store carbon — and how soil carbon may affect climate in the future, says a Baylor University researcher.

Mitchell Hora walks to a field on his family’s southeast Iowa farm, where 5-inch-high soybeans grow in alternating rows with 4-foot-tall cereal rye. The 25-year-old admits that combining the two crops would make most farmers freak out. Read more in this article from The Hawk Eye (Burlington, IA).

Trey Hill led a small group of fellow farmers to a field outside his office in Rock Hall on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a cloudy February day, but the ground was alive with color — purple and red turnip tops mixing exuberantly with green rye, vetch and clover, and beneath it all, rich brown soil. Read more in this article from GreenBiz.

Aliceville farmer Annie Dee, who runs the Dee River Ranch in Pickens County, is one of a growing number of farmers who are signed up to get paid to sequester carbon in the soil using what are being called regenerative farm techniques.

Land use changes, nutrient depletion, and drought can make plant roots grow deeper into the soil. But scientists question how that growth affects carbon in the soil.